


see if anything walks away

by somethingdifferent



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Americana, F/M, also my first attempt at writing in the past tense it is truly a blessed day for us all, why yes i DID need to write yet another purple wedding roadtrip au thank u for asking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3872293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Petyr's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. It was summer, but that would not last forever.</em> The road stretched out ahead of them - freeing, winding, unending.</p><p>[petyr/sansa; americana]</p>
            </blockquote>





	see if anything walks away

 

 

Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom  
           to kingdom through the wilderness,  
                      where you learn things, where you're left to your own devices.  


**RICHARD SIKEN **

 

Acting like you've come so far - the bed you made yourself,  
and this house, and me are all falling apart.

** DIIV **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**1.**

Even with the silencer, the gunshot was loud.

She hadn't expected that.

The man to her right, it seemed, had.

 

 

 

 

**2.**

To begin with, there was (in any order): a boy, a car, a girl, and a gun.

"Everything you need to make a movie," Petyr joked, his hands nowhere near the proper ten and two on the wheel. At her expression, at the blank stare she offered him, he explained, quoting, " _All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun_."

(To continue with, there was also: a road.

It stretched out ahead of them - freeing, winding, unending.)

Sansa watched the landscape passing by the window in a blur of reds and oranges.

 

 

 

 

**3.**

At a diner in Nevada, he smiled at her over breakfast. He held an apple in one hand, a knife in the other. Outside, there was only the desert, wide, unforgiving, vast, and the heat crawling off of it in wavering lines. The mountains were red as rust, the sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. On the field across the highway from the restaurant, flowers grew alongside the road, colorful lines and dots leaning in time with the wind. It was so different from home, this place, that it made her want to cry, it made the food stick in her throat as she swallowed down her meal.

"Where are we going?" she asked him, not for the first time.

He shrugged, as if she had said something about the weather, _I think it might be hot today, I think it might burn us up, bleach some bones, kill someone_. "We're going," he said, "somewhere very far from this godforsaken place."

She put her hands on the table, almost slammed them down, and the silverware jumped up.

"Did you know," he continued nonchalantly, as if she had done nothing at all, "that you share a name with a kind of apple?" He lifted the hand not holding the knife, demonstrating, and he carved off a piece. The hand holding the knife reached toward her in offering.

She took the slice, the juice sticky between her fingers, and ate it in two bites.

He smiled, and this time she thought it might touch his eyes.

 

 

 

 

**4.**

He told the motel clerk that she was his daughter, Alayne, and it was the first time in the days that she had been with him that she wanted to scream. _No,_ she could say, _no, I'm not his daughter I don't belong to him I'm Sansa Stark don't you know me from the TV Sansa Stark Sansa Stark Sansa Stark Stark Stark_. Instead she only ducked her head, an imitation of shyness, grinned bashfully as the woman crooned, well aren't you pretty now how old are you?

"Fifteen," Littlefinger replied in her stead, grinning that genial grin that was always so easily fixed onto his face. He draped his arm across her shoulders, and for the first time she noticed a glint of gold on his left hand, wrapped around his ring finger. "Takes after her mother, doesn't she?"

In the room, she dropped her bag on the bed closest to the window and fell on the mattress after it, glanced up at him and asked why he didn't tell the woman her real age.

"Seventeen," he said, as if it were obvious. "I mean, Jesus, look at you. All that red hair, you look nothing like me. They're going to think you're my underage mistress, but the younger you are, the more they'll trust you. You can't pass for fourteen. Fifteen, they might not ask any questions."

Then, later, in the bathroom, he combed the dye through her hair, he looked at her as she leaned her head back in the sink, his gray-green eyes practically black in the dim light. She remembered the man she met with her father at her side: she remembered the story about how Littlefinger got his name, how his smooth hand had pressed into the small of her back when he introduced himself, how he had run his eyes over her face like he was searching for an imperfection, a glint of irritation lighting in his eyes when there was none to be found.

She remembered her father (her _real_ father, not the false one that loomed over her), his hands over his head as they shot him.

"There," Littlefinger said, taking a step back to see her fully, "you could be my daughter now."

"Father," she murmured dutifully, playing along like they taught her, like he always advised her to, "who else would I be?"

 

 

 

 

**5.**

It was almost unbelievable, she thought, that there was a time in her life when this _wasn't_ her life - this running, this hiding, this bleeding. Her childhood must have been a good one; they had money, and they never wanted for anything. When they relocated to Los Angeles from Philadelphia, it had been like a dream come true. She had seen the movies, she had read the magazines, and California was the golden coast, the place where her life would truly begin. The warmth of the sun on her shoulders, the expensive cars, the beautiful clothing, the perfect houses, the perfect, perfect boyfriend. And she was a child then, wasn't she? She must have been, to have ignored up until the very end all of the cracks in the foundation, to have missed how her father would tense his shoulders when he got home from work, the whispered arguments between him and her mother, and the words they said caught only in pieces, only with flashes of understanding, only later stitched together to make any real meaning: _money, company, embezzle, dead, law, Baratheon, father, Lannister, dead, coke, forget, Littlefinger, dead, kill, guns, dead, runners, dead, Robert dead us dead the children dead dead dead_.

And then, within months, her father, her mother, and her brother were dead, her younger brothers burned up with their home, her sister missing within days of their father's death, and Sansa Stark wasting away in the perfect house with the perfect, perfect boyfriend on an insurmountable hill in sunny California.

 

 

 

 

**6.**

She replayed it in her head, sometimes. With each retread the memory lost its vibrance, stopped feeling so much like victory and started seeming mundane, ordinary, like it wasn't something that changed everything.

Dontos had taken her by the hand and led her away from the body. He had taken her to the car, where Littlefinger was, but she didn't see him until he was already outside of it, and Dontos handed him the gun. They left him there, bullet in his head, cocaine smeared on his clothes, over his gums, and Joffrey in the alleyway behind.

"Hello, sweetling," Littlefinger had said when he turned to her, not a single drop of blood staining his suit.

"Come here, Sansa," Petyr had said, holding out his open hand.

 

 

 

 

**7.**

"Why?" she asked once. They were almost out of Utah, and outside of the door she could hear one of the maids as she rolled the cleaning cart up and down the hall. The song she was humming the melody for was familiar, but Sansa couldn't think of what it was.

The room was small, only one bed, and Petyr laid back on the couch, his arm folded across his face. At her question, he lifted it slightly, glancing at her sideways as he waited for her to continue the question. When she didn't, he sat up, turning to look at her head-on. 

"We're going to your Aunt Lysa's, in Montana," he told her. "I know that you've never met her, but she _is_ your legal guardian."

"Then why didn't we go to her as soon - as soon as Dad died?"

"It was too dangerous."

"Bullshit. It's dangerous _now_." She stood up from the bed as if to prove her point, noticing too late how exposed she was, her shorts too short, the line of her tank top dipping low on her neck. He watched her with a gleam in his eye that she couldn't find a name for.

"Sansa," he said, his voice a warning. Against what or who, she didn't know.

"Oh," she muttered after a moment, suddenly understanding. "You mean it was too dangerous for _you_."

If there was any truth in what she said, he didn't show it. He only continued to look at her, as if waiting for something to happen, for her to do something. She could, she knew that. She could scream at him, demand he tell her what he had done, threaten to go to the police; she could break down and cry, just once, just this one time, because she was only a girl after all, and too many people, him included, had forgotten that this was so; she could try to kill him, if she wanted to. He might even welcome the challenge.

Sansa brushed past him on her way out of the door, and twenty minutes later she returned with two bottles of Coke, four bags of chips, and a bucket of ice. He ordered dinner from the motel, as he did whenever room service was available, and they ate across the room from each other, Disney Channel playing on the TV against the wall. Sansa wanted desperately to laugh when the audience did, like she could when she really _was_ fifteen and watched the shows with Arya and Bran, but she couldn't remember why she once found the jokes so funny.

 

 

 

 

**8.**

The song, Sansa realized later that night, with the lights out, the only familiar body for miles and miles around sleeping on the couch just a few feet away, was one Mom used to sing to her when she was a child - something about ice cream castles, something about fairy tales, something about not knowing.

The look in Petyr's eyes, she realized just before she drifted off, was one of hunger.

 

 

 

 

**9.**

There are a few things that Sansa learned about men in California.

The first: do not trust how nice his eyes look. Do not take this to mean that he will be good to you. Do not take the lack of callouses on his hand to mean that he is, himself, soft, that he is unused to violence, that he will not hurt you. Be careful when you choose him; outsides and insides rarely ever align to mean the same thing.

The second: do not be afraid of scars, of imperfections. Be afraid when he says he will hurt you, be afraid when he says he likes to hurt you, and be wary when he says he likes to hurt others. Do not run away with a man if you aren't sure about what kind of man he is. Be sure about what kind of man he is.

The third: do not forget the gifts that he gives. If he offers you his hand in compassion, offer him your own in compassion. Return those kindnesses. Return them in full.

The fourth: do not trust a man until you learn what he wants from you. Always know what he wants from you. Always.

 

 

 

 

**10.**

At a gas station that was nowhere in particular, far in any direction from anywhere, save for the road, someone recognized her face. Sansa was leaning against the car, watching the gas pump, while inside the little convenience store a stone's throw away Petyr bought snacks, mints, and cigarettes. There were no cameras; he had made sure of that before they pulled in to fill up the car.

A man who looked to be the same age as her parents squinted at Sansa, resting his hand on his brow to shield his eyes from the sun. The longer he looked, the more anxious she became, fidgeting with the straps of her sandals as she glanced in any direction but his. She focused on the flowers growing on the other end of the highway, watched as they swayed and fluttered in the breeze. They were white and purple, uneven spots against the tall, near-dead grass.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" the man said, and she half-shrugged, nodding noncommittally. "I'm headed to Las Vegas," he continued, taking her silence as tacit agreement to the conversation, "for a friend's wedding. They've been planning for months, and where do they decide to get married? Las fucking Vegas. Shit."

"That's nice," she said.

"You know," he mused, voice slow and considering, "you look awfully familiar. Do I know you?"

"I wouldn't think so," Petyr interrupted, taking a place easily at Sansa's side. He smiled at her, his face the perfect copy of an adoring father. "My daughter is the spitting image of her mother, though. Maybe you know my wife?"

The man looked between her and Petyr, his eyes narrowing in confusion. "Must be," he said, nodding thoughtfully, in confirmation. "Pretty girl like you - just one of those faces." He pulled the gas pump out of his car and fell into the driver's seat, calling at them through his open window as he drove away, "The two of you have a nice day."

For a moment, Petyr did nothing, just waved in acknowledgement as the man drove. As soon as the other car was gone from sight, vanished over the horizon, he turned, the mask of normalcy torn from him as he grabbed at her shoulders, looking over her as if inspecting for wounds.

"Did he try to get close to you?" he demanded, his tone urgent and rough. "Did he touch you? What did he say before I showed up?"

"No, he didn't do anything, he didn't say anything," she insisted. "He said he was going to a wedding in Vegas. He probably just saw my picture on TV."

Petyr let out his breath in a rush, his hands dropping from her shoulders to rest at the sides of her arms. "Good," he murmured, almost absently, as his head tipped forward, a few locks of hair falling over his brow, his eyes hidden from her sight. When he looked back up, he was Littlefinger once again, his expression exquisitely composed.

"Let's go, Alayne," he said.

 

 

 

 

**11.**

In Los Angeles, he had once called her by her mother's name. It was the first night she saw him, outside of the party where her parents were socializing with the upper echelons of the city, every person the exact kind Sansa hoped she might one day become. She was in the gardens behind the house, imagining all the scenarios in which Joffrey might suddenly appear, declare his love for her, and save her from the boring adults just inside.

"Cat," Littlefinger had called to her as he approached. After barely a moment, his face changed, frozen somewhere between surprise and anger when he realized what had come out of his mouth.

"I look like her, don't I?" she had replied lightly, a way to break the tension.

"Yes," he said, composing himself once more, and when he smiled at her it didn't - couldn't - reach his eyes. "You're a dead ringer for her when she was your age. I bet every boy in the state will be clamoring to date you by the end of the year, Sansa." He ended the sentence with a careful emphasis on her name, as if to remind himself of what it was.

She grinned, bending her head gracefully down. A strand of her hair fell from her braided up-do as she did, and it landed almost in her eye. Before she could remove it herself, he had snatched it up with his fingers, tucking it back behind her ear.

"Thank you, Mr. Baelish," she stammered out, unsure if it was supposed to be for the compliment or for the fleeting touch of his hand against her cheek.

"Please," he had said, his eyes warm and dark, "call me Petyr."

 

 

 

 

**12.**

He bought her new clothes in Ogden. She was grateful for that, if nothing else. For the past few days, she had been surviving on the few articles of clothing she had managed to grab along with the rest of her most precious belongings as he had waited in the car outside, the engine running.

Somehow, he found the most expensive store in town within an hour of arriving. Before they went in, he turned to her, his voice low and urgent as he said, "Choose simple things. Think modest. Well-made, not flashy. Dark colors. You'll want those kinds of things when we get to your aunt."

As soon as they walked into the store, though, he was back to playing the part of her doting father, clicking his tongue at dresses that were "over his price range," rolling his eyes to the sales clerk when she dragged a mountain of clothing into the dressing room, complaining to the only other man in the store (who, apparently, was indulging his wife) about women and their shopping obsession. It almost made her laugh out loud, the idea of him as a father who couldn't care less about clothes. It was clear from the moment she met him, with his fancy, impeccably tailored suits, his shined shoes, and his ever-present mockingbird tie pin, that Petyr Baelish took his appearance very, very seriously.

She stepped out of the dressing room only once before they left, when she needed help getting the zipper up the back of her dress. Impractical, of course. It was not as if there would be anyone at Aunt Lysa's who would care about how she looked. But it was so lovely, just like the ones she used to wear at home when she went on nervous dates with boys from school: all blue velvet, tight against her hips, and with a neckline that reached far past her collarbone.

She still loved beautiful things, after all. She hadn't changed, in that respect.

Petyr stood up when she appeared in the dressing room door, as if ready to leave. For a second, so fast she could scarcely believe that it had actually happened, something flitted across his face, something akin to the expression she had seen in his eyes that day in the motel, but stronger, fiercer. When he zipped up her dress, his hands lingered too long, brushed too much against her skin in a way that, if anyone were to see, would scream that he wasn't her father.

She could feel his breath against the back of her neck, and she shivered.

"Do you like it?" she asked too brightly, flipping her hair back into place as she turned to look at him. "Dad?"

A reminder, for both of them.

His eyes dragged up from her neck, his voice almost harsh as he said, "It's very pretty, Alayne."

He was telling the truth, Sansa knew, but perhaps not the one he intended. If she had learned anything from her time with Littlefinger, it was this: lies fell from his lips smoothly, easily, and never required any effort on his part. It was the truth that grated in his vocal cords, that made his mouth twist into an uneven shape, that clawed its way up from the back of his throat - terrible and unwelcome.

 

 

 

 

**13.**

There was one thing she never had the chance to learn about men in California:

what to do when you know that one wants you.

 

 

 

 

**14.**

One night, he fell asleep before she did, sprawled out over the covers on the bed across from hers with the lights still on. It had been a long day, the hours they spent in the car more than most that week, but he always insisted that he be the one to do all of the driving. In sleep, he was relaxed like he never was when he was awake, his hands loose at his sides, his eyelashes making dark shadows on his cheeks.

She imagined, suddenly, what would happen if she were to wake him. She imagined what he would look like in the dark of her shadow as she leaned over him. She imagined how his eyes would widen as she leaned in close. She imagined what he would feel like if he kissed her - if it would taste like the cigarettes he only smoked when it was night, when his hands were shaking after he hung up the phone, or if it would be the taste of the mints he bought at every rest stop.

She didn't need to imagine what would happen if he pushed her away; she knew that he wouldn't.

 

 

 

 

**15.**

In the car, as they drove through the mountains, she glanced carefully at him from the corner of her eye. Every once in a while, as if he were unable to help himself, his gaze would slide over to her, to where she lounged in the passenger seat, her feet up on the dashboard, her arm hanging loosely from the headrest. It was summer. Sansa leaned her head out of the window, her dyed hair flying back against the wind, and when she looked over to the driver's seat she smiled, wide and genuine, at how the sun was shining, at the song that was playing on the radio, at him. Petyr's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. It was summer, but that would not last forever.

 

 

 

 

**16.**

Outside of the motel room, she heard him talking on the phone, his voice low and urgent as he hissed instructions to whoever was on the other end. As much as she wished it, as much as he might have hoped for it, neither of them could forget who he was and what he did. As much as she wished for it, she could not forget about any part of what had happened.

In the bathroom, as she got ready for bed, she could hear him again, but not speaking this time. He paced back and forth, his steps quiet on the carpeted floor. She could almost see him, his jacket strewn against the overstuffed armchair in the corner, the sheets rumpled on the couch where he would be sleeping. She pictured him walking the length of the room over and over as a tiger in a cage, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, his hair untidy in the way it got at the end of the day.

She did not know when she first learned these things about him. It seemed to her that she had always known them, that those facts were always in her, waiting to be tugged to the forefront of her mind.

When she emerged from the bathroom, pulling at the hem of the overlong shirt she had been wearing as pajamas, he looked up quickly, giving her a once-over, then lowered his eyes almost immediately as he went back to texting.

"Is everything -" She hesitated, jerking her head in the direction of his phone.

Littlefinger smirked, giving his cell a quick shake as he moved past her. "All well in hand, sweetling," he murmured, leaning too close as he spoke, just as he always did. This time, though, Sansa did not lean away from him as she normally did.

"I would hope so," she replied evenly. "Or else all of this was for nothing."

His face was inches from hers, and something like pride flickered across his features before he could tamp it down.

"Goodnight, Mr. Baelish," she said, and watched as his gaze fell to her mouth.

 

 

 

 

**17.**

Her dreams had always been simple at home. Her nights had been filled with images of beautiful boys, flowers in her hands, elaborate weddings. She had few nightmares, and all of them ended in her flying, past rooftops, past telephone wires, into outer space, alone. She had all but stopped dreaming the year everything went to hell in a hand basket - there was no purpose in fear, just as there was no purpose in hope, when her life was as it was.

When she startled awake at two in the morning, she had a nagging sense that she must have been dreaming, but the only pictures she could recall were those of wolves, of lions, of birds. After a few minutes, though, even they slipped away.

 

 

 

 

**18.**

She woke up earlier than him for a change. Perhaps it was the promise of the day, she thought, that they would finally make it to Lysa's house. She imagined that her aunt would like her, even then knowing that love might be too much to hope for.

When it was nine and he still wasn't up, Sansa crept from the bed, knelt by the couch and nudged him with the heel of her palm. "Mr. Baelish," she stage-whispered, shaking his arm, then: "Petyr."

His eyes opened at the third shove, his breath catching as she peered at him. His hand reached out, as if of its own accord, and smoothed the hair back from her face. After a pause, she leaned into the touch.

"Sansa," he said, and she couldn't tell what he wanted the word to mean.

Whatever it was supposed to be, in the next moment it was lost.

She leaned forward, kissing him quickly on the mouth, and for the first time in months she felt her own age, a girl playing pretend at being an adult, kissing a man who could be her father (who _said_ he was her father) because she wanted to see what it would be like. Because she wanted to see what he would do about the ache that pulsed low in her stomach.

It was him that continued what she had started, him that lunged forward and caught her mouth and opened it with his tongue. He wrapped his arm around her waist, lifting her tank top so he could feel her skin against his skin. She shivered at the contact and followed him on pure instinct as he pulled her onto the couch, spreading her legs over his lap as he gripped at the back of her knees.

He was the one who flipped them over, who peeled the clothes from her body, who raked his eyes across her like he was some carnivorous animal. But she scratched at his back, she tore the t-shirt from him and ran her nails down the long, jagged scar on his chest, she breathed his name, in pain, in pleasure, as he slid into her, rough and fast when he pushed her back against the arm of the sofa. She could feel the warmth of him, of her blood as it stained her thighs, and Sansa wondered, dizzily, if maybe she was an animal too.

The pace he set was brutal, and it had her clawing at his shoulders, scrambling her legs down the cushions, had her mouth open as she gasped, as she groaned. He brought her off quickly, his fingers between her legs, and he swore when she shuddered and stilled underneath him, his eyes locked on hers.

He said her name when he came, only moments later. He gritted it out through his teeth, as if she had ripped it from him.

 

 

 

 

**19.**

When he appeared in those days in Los Angeles, the few times he did, he always seemed to her to be waiting for something. She couldn't tell what then, of course. She only knew that he was wealthy, that when he smiled at anyone but her (and sometimes, even her) it was fake, that he liked her enough to be kind. She knew that he had loved her mother, she knew that he hated the name he was called, she knew that he wanted her to trust him.

The night that he took her from that house he had offered to get her something to eat, and Sansa remembered how she had balked at the question, how she had suddenly thought of something from a story she heard once in school, about a girl, a man, and six pomegranate seeds.

It had only taken until the next morning that she took one, two, three slices of an apple from his knife, and swallowed all of them greedily down.

 

 

 

 

**20.**

Outside of her aunt's house, he turned to her in the car, his ring shining bright and accusing on his left hand.

"Are you ready?" he asked. He reached over to her, picking a strand of hair from her cheek and doing nothing with it, just holding it between his fingers. After a second, his eyes slid over to hers, his pupils large and dark as he searched her face.

She nodded. "I'm ready," she said, and she stepped out of the car to prove it.

The house was on a hill, and all around the smooth, paved steps up to it flowers bloomed in masses and masses of colors - violets, reds, greens, whites. The sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. Sansa closed her eyes, tilting her face up to the sun. When she opened them, Petyr was in front of her.

"Come here, Sansa," he said, and held out his open hand.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Song that Cat used to sing is "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell, inspired by the fact that it's what my Dad used to play for me when I was a kid. The music is really sweet and serene, but the lyrics are nothing but melancholy.
> 
>  
> 
> _Rows and floes of angel hair_  
>  _And ice cream castles in the air_  
>  _And feather canyons everywhere_  
>  _I've looked at clouds that way_
> 
>  
> 
> _But now they only block the sun_  
>  _They rain and snow on everyone_  
>  _So many things I would have done_  
>  _But clouds got in my way_
> 
>  
> 
> _I've looked at clouds from both sides now_  
>  _From up and down, and still somehow_  
>  _It's cloud illusions I recall_  
>  _I really don't know clouds at all_


End file.
